Posted on 05/03/2008 4:38:34 PM PDT by NYer
Scripture, our Evangelical friends tell us, is the inerrant Word of God. Quite right, the Catholic replies; but how do you know this to be true?
It's not an easy question for Protestants, because, having jettisoned Tradition and the Church, they have no objective authority for the claims they make for Scripture. There is no list of canonical books anywhere in the Bible, nor does any book (with the exception of St. John's Apocalypse) claim to be inspired. So, how does a "Bible Christian" know the Bible is the Word of God?
If he wants to avoid a train of thought that will lead him into the Catholic Church, he has just one way of responding: With circular arguments pointing to himself (or Luther or the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries or some other party not mentioned in the Bible) as an infallible authority telling him that it is so. Such arguments would have perplexed a first or second century Christian, most of whom never saw a Bible.
Christ founded a teaching Church. So far as we know, he himself never wrote a word (except on sand). Nor did he commission the Apostles to write anything. In due course, some Apostles (and non-Apostles) composed the twenty-seven books which comprise the New Testament. Most of these documents are ad hoc; they are addressed to specific problems that arose in the early Church, and none claim to present the whole of Christian revelation. It's doubtful that St. Paul even suspected that his short letter to Philemon begging pardon for a renegade slave would some day be read as Holy Scripture.
Who, then, decided that it was Scripture? The Catholic Church. And it took several centuries to do so. It was not until the Council of Carthage (397) and a subsequent decree by Pope Innocent I that Christendom had a fixed New Testament canon. Prior to that date, scores of spurious gospels and "apostolic" writings were floating around the Mediterranean basin: the Gospel of Thomas, the "Shepherd" of Hermas, St. Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans, and so forth. Moreover, some texts later judged to be inspired, such as the Letter to the Hebrews, were controverted. It was the Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, which separated the wheat from the chaff.
But, according to Protestants, the Catholic Church was corrupt and idolatrous by the fourth century and so had lost whatever authority it originally had. On what basis, then, do they accept the canon of the New Testament? Luther and Calvin were both fuzzy on the subject. Luther dropped seven books from the Old Testament, the so-called Apocrypha in the Protestant Bible; his pretext for doing so was that orthodox Jews had done it at the synod of Jamnia around 100 A. D.; but that synod was explicitly anti-Christian, and so its decisions about Scripture make an odd benchmark for Christians.
Luther's real motive was to get rid of Second Maccabees, which teaches the doctrine of Purgatory. He also wanted to drop the Letter of James, which he called "an epistle of straw," because it flatly contradicts the idea of salvation by "faith alone" apart from good works. He was restrained by more cautious Reformers. Instead, he mistranslated numerous New Testament passages, most notoriously Romans 3:28, to buttress his polemical position.
The Protestant teaching that the Bible is the sole spiritual authority--sola scriptura --is nowhere to be found in the Bible. St. Paul wrote to Timothy that Scripture is "useful" (which is an understatemtn), but neither he nor anyone else in the early Church taught sola scriptura. And, in fact, nobody believed it until the Reformation. Newman called the idea that God would let fifteen hundred years pass before revealing that the bible was the sole teaching authority for Christians an "intolerable paradox."
Newman also wrote: "It is antecedently unreasonable to Bsuppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly, from the nature of the case, interpret itself...." And, indeed, once they had set aside the teaching authority of the Church, the Reformers began to argue about key Scriptural passages. Luther and Zwingli, for example, disagreed vehemently about what Christ meant by the words, "This is my Body."
St. Augustine, usually Luther's guide and mentor, ought to have the last word about sola scriptura: "But for the authority of the Church, I would not believe the Gospel."
The RCC is not a church it is a synagogue.. nothing HOLY in it..
At creation?
That's a lie.
You said there’s nothing holy in a synagogue.
Anti-Semitic much?
A.) I was not addressing you.
B.) While it easy to throw around charges of “hatred, bigotry and false witness”, it’s not so easy to back it up - which is what’s required if you want to be taken seriously.
Define the three terms you threw out as indictments and what statements on the site fulfill those definitions.
Or shut up.
No. Blessed does not mean greater in stature. It means happy. That's it. As I stated in a previous post the same greek word translated blessed is translated happy (KJV) in James 5:11. It can also mean approved, well thought of, etc. Never exalted or great. To claim that blessed means to be in a greater station is a corruption of the Greek text.
Eve was created without sin. Do you doubt that?
Nope.
Wouldn't being created without sin be a greater thing than being created with the stain of sin? (Original sin, we speak of here.)
Nope. Mary herself acknowledged her own sin, so that don't fly. Luke 1:48a "For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden...(KJV)" "...humble state...."(NASV; NIV; ESV); "....LOWLY state..."(NKJV) As I stated in a previous post the Greek word here for low, lowly or humble means to affirm one's sinful condition or guilt before God.
...unless Mary was also preserved from Original Sin.
If that were true Mary is a liar since she admitted her sin (see above Luke 1:48). Whoops, and if she's a liar then there's your sin and around and around we go........
What Roman Catholicism has done is create a different Mary from Scripture. They've created a sinless version which is blasphemy and contradicts Romans 3:23, "For ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All means ALL. And this includes Mary unless God is now a liar also. But hey, thanks for proving that goddess worship is in fact what the RC has done by making Mary sinless and equal to Christ.
It is a public forum. Your slanders address me as a Catholic.
B.) While it easy to throw around charges of “hatred, bigotry and false witness”, it’s not so easy to back it up - which is what’s required if you want to be taken seriously.Define the three terms you threw out as indictments and what statements on the site fulfill those definitions.
Your post.
Or shut up.
I shan't. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Catholic Church.
The "Queen Mother" was never a queen "in her own right" but given the courtesy title because she was married to King George.
To the extent that we Papists give Mary the title of "Queen" of this or that, it is as much as a bald statement that she does NOT "naturally" or "by right" have that title but by the courtesy of Heaven, because she is mother of Christ the King. When these terms were introduced, they were introduced in a culture that understood them.
As to the rest, Mary is understood to enjoy now what all the blessed will enjoy one day. She is not different IN KIND from any redeemed person (aka "saint"). We do think she enjoys these blessings to a greater degree that any other saint will, but that does not make her a goddess, any more than my being the heaviest person in my family makes me a boulder. And we think what God promises to the elect is very wonderful indeed.
And if only God is holy, is to be taken in an all-inclusive way, then we'd better tell Paul and others to stop calling the Christians the holy ones (usually translated "saints", but the Greek is the same in any case.)
Finally, any remarkable characteristics which we may say Mary has, we understand as being graces, not her "own" powers or holiness or whatever.
I'm not trying to persuade you to agree with this. I'm just trying to help you aim your attacks more precisely. Currently you haven't said anything that shows that you understand our teaching, so your disagreements have no effect.
No. I agree that she was made without sin, but I submit that to be incidental, as at the time, so was all of creation without sin. At the time, she was no 'better' for it that any other creature.
Furthermore, it is made null by the obvious fact of her being cursed.
Your post was deleted. I have no further comment.
I thank God that I am not as other men are.
It is incidental,
LOL. That's right, just ignore the facts that don't fit your prejudices.
Col 1:24
The Roman Catholic Church "IS/are" the Gates of Hell..
You might be projecting...
Nope.
Wouldn't being created without sin be a greater thing than being created with the stain of sin? (Original sin, we speak of here.)
Nope.
Nope? You would rather be created with sin than without?
I can't argue with that, that's just insanity.
Mary herself acknowledged her own sin, so that don't fly. Luke 1:48a "For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden...(KJV)" "...humble state...."(NASV; NIV; ESV); "....LOWLY state..."(NKJV) As I stated in a previous post the Greek word here for low, lowly or humble means to affirm one's sinful condition or guilt before God.
That's fine and dandy, but we're talking about Eve, not Mary. Eve was created without original sin. But since you don't think that's better than being created with Original Sin, I can only assume you either have no idea what Original Sin is, or are insane and desire the dark things.
Your logical leaps with Luke 1:48 (being lower than God doesn't mean one is sinful) can wait for another day till you sort out whether sin is beteer than no sin.
I don't spend much time researching those guys but I'm sure they did search the scriptures...So I don't know what they were wrong on...
But one thing I've found is that when people disagree on the scripture, it's generally not because they don't understand it...It's because they don't like what it says or don't believe it...So they change it to their liking...
“God created Eve out of nothing, in a perfectly sinless state. How is that not a blessing?”
Sorry chief - Scripture shows that Eve was created from someone (Adam) God had already created, who was, in turn, created from something (dirt) God had already created.
Genesis 2:
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.